


At the Scramble Crossing

by schemingreader



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: snapelyholidays, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-11
Updated: 2012-01-11
Packaged: 2017-10-29 08:38:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/317890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schemingreader/pseuds/schemingreader
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry learns that Snape has found work at the Genius Bar at an Apple Store, far from home, and tracks him down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	At the Scramble Crossing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [7types](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=7types).



  
"Oh my God will you please just SHUT UP! I am not angry with you, Potter!"

"You're yelling," Harry said.

"I," Severus said deliberately, "am not yelling. I cannot have a scene at work, Potter." He wasn't yelling. He was urgently communicating through his clenched teeth as he attempted his never very competent Japanese service smile.

"I know you didn't want me to find you."

Severus shut his teeth against an answer for a moment. "Nevertheless, here you are. Hello. How do you do. Welcome to the Apple Store."

He reached out to shake the young man's hand, and Harry Potter, Chosen One, Boy Who Lived, hero, and so on, burst into tears.

"Why are you--are you crying?" Severus said stupidly.

"I saw you _die_ , you bastard," Potter said. He lunged for Severus, who tried to step back, but was too slow. The expected blow turned out to be a very awkward, damp sort of embrace.

"Stop hugging me," Severus said, but not, apparently, loudly enough to be heard over Harry Potter's manly suppressed sobbing. "Potter," Severus said, allowing a hand to rest awkwardly on the boy's shoulder, "Please stop."

  


  
It was true. Severus had not wanted anyone to find him after the Battle of Hogwarts, least of all Harry Blinking Potter. He would not have been working in an Apple Store in Tokyo if he wanted to be found. He never suspected anyone would be able to find him. He whispered the boy out of the store and onto the street with the promise that they could have lunch together, but only if Potter didn't come inside again.

Potter met him on the street outside the store at lunchtime, and they began walking together toward Ootoya. He found it difficult to look at the boy, whose face had matured to look so much like Lily's that he was surprised. Potter, on the other hand, looked at him like he'd never get enough.

Severus finally had enough. "What?"

"I remember you were so old, but now you seem younger to me--maybe it's just because you aren't under so much pressure."

"I'm 45 years old," Severus said.

"My wife left me," Potter said. "I can't believe she left me."

"She left you in Tokyo? Are you lost?"

Potter sniffled threateningly and then began to laugh. "I went with Hermione to visit her parents in Australia." He paused to collect himself.

"And your wife, justifiably annoyed by your apparent desertion..." Severus prompted, but Potter laughed again.

"No, she left me beforehand. She said I would never change. She found me difficult to live with. So I took a holiday to see Australia, and I heard that someone who looked like you was working in the Apple Store in Melbourne, and I went there and saw you from a distance, but then the next day, you'd moved."

"Ah, I knew there had to be an explanation."

"For my happening to find you in Tokyo?"

Severus, who had been thinking, "for someone to leave you when you're so attractive," pretended that he'd meant the other and nodded, and then said, "Wait."

"What?"

"You followed me on two continents and then expressed surprise that I was alive."

Potter shrugged. "It's different to see you up close."

"You've become unhinged," Severus said, but Potter didn't react to the insult; he nodded.

"Yes, I have a bit," he admitted. They entered the local Ootoya and took the escalator to the second floor. The waiter welcomed them. Potter stood there gormless so Severus ordered for them both--Saba Shioyaki, grilled mackerel, with miso soup and genmaicha.

Potter took his tray and said, "Domo arrigato," which Severus no longer made the mistake of doing. Foreigners were famous for thanking people too frequently and too enthusiastically. The counterman didn't bat an eye. He was used to foreigners, and smiled politely.

Of course, anyone would smile at Potter. He was handsome. Even in his current, slightly-more-disheveled-than-usual state, he had his mother's square jaw and beautiful eyes, his father's enviably curvy lips, and a very nice physique. Not that Severus was looking as they sat down.

The food at Ootoya was wholesome. Potter fell on his mackerel and rice like he hadn't eaten in a week.

"Oh, this is good," he said. "Thank you."

"Don't you feed yourself, Potter?" Severus asked. He regretted it immediately. He wasn't supposed to care.

Potter stopped chewing and purse his lips ruefully. "What was the word you used before? Unhinged?"

"It means you are mentally ill," Severus said. "Crazy. Not in your right mind."

Potter's eyes were soft and amused, and he smiled. "I don't recall you explaining things at so much length, when we were at school, Professor."

"I knew you weren't paying attention in class," Severus muttered. Potter laughed.

"I am so lucky," he said, and cleared his throat a few times. "You're alive. You didn't die." He reached across the table and grasped Severus' wrist.

" _You're_ lucky that I didn't die?"

"That sounded a bit ridiculous," Potter admitted. "I'm sorry," he said, and started to laugh again. "Hey, Professor Snape! I'm really sorry for all the stupid and ridiculous things I've said to you." He grinned. "This is great!"

"It is?" Severus gently extricated his arm from Potter's grasp.

"Yeah! When I thought you were dead, I was miserable about how I'd never have the chance to, you know. Make things up."

Severus sat back in his chair and sipped his tea. He put the cup down on the tray. "I would have thought you'd have a lot of choice words saved up for me. For tricking you, for not telling you about your mother, for--for my role in what happened to her." For killing her and then living the rest of my life in the shape of her corpse.

"Oh, yeah," Potter said. "Yes. I was thinking of all of those things, the whole time I looked for you. But now...I don't know. I'm just glad to see you."

"But you never liked me."

"My mum did, though."

There was a sort of humming roar in Severus' ears. He recognized it as the unwelcome onslaught of mixed feelings. "No," he said.

"I think she did," Potter said. "I would have, if I'd known you. I mean, if I had you in Potions or something."

"You did have me for Potions, Potter."

"I mean, as a classmate, the way you were, back then. I was just looking at you and thinking, 'He's him. He's the Half-Blood Prince,' and then it made sense that you're so--"

"As much as I've enjoyed this conversation," Severus said, standing up, "I must get back to work."

Potter's face fell. Well, that was what was supposed to happen, right? Severus "love 'em and leave 'em" Snape, back in action, alienating the next generation of people who want to be close to him. He stood there, consumed all over again with love, rage, jealousy, regret, and a desperate desire for someone to see through him and love him in spite of his vileness.

There they were in a fast food restaurant in Japan, the worst possible place on earth for spontaneous hugs, and Potter, that idiot, had risen to his feet and was hugging him again.

"I don't," Severus began, determined to lie and say he didn't want, he didn't like, he didn't need, but Potter did it anyway, pulled him close and crushed their bodies together, wrapping his arms around Severus' body. Someone muttered something about gaijin and Americans and Potter ignored it.

"Why are you hugging me? You saw me kill someone," Severus said, almost to himself, except that his mouth was so close to Potter's ear...

"I'm sorry," Potter said.

"I have to go back to work," Severus said, inanely, stepping back. Why not just hand me your heart? Why not just pull mine out of my chest and look at it, beating? Why do you keep touching me?

"I'll meet you, after," Potter said suddenly. "We can go for a drink."

No, Severus thought. He nodded, once, which meant the opposite of no. Idiot, he called himself. Don't you know how to refuse? Don't you understand what is happening here?

He turned on his heel, leaving Potter standing alone in the cafeteria looking exceptionally young.

  


  
Potter stood on the corner, a small, slight adult man. Waves of people, all nationalities, broke around him on the busy street corner. The sky darkened early in the autumn and the moving colored lights of the signs hit his face as he looked around. He didn't see Severus approaching him, yet. Green light and pink light and red and yellow flashed across the upturned lenses of his glasses, his high cheekbones.

Even in his adult posture you could see the same lonely, sad boy, wary and observant, just waiting for someone to be kind to him. He spotted Severus and favored him with that same wide-open smile, that same display of inappropriate feeling he used to show his friends--as though friendship were as great a magic as flying on a broom, transfiguring a turtle, manufacturing liquid luck.

It was, though. Severus could fly, transfigure, brew potions. He could stopper death, he could kill with a word and heal with a song, but he had never--he could never...

Friendship was not his forte, he might have said when he was younger. Love was not his metier. Affection was not his thing.

Potter slung an arm around his shoulders--they were of a height. "Where do you want to go?" Potter said. The queue of Severus' hair caught on Potter's sleeve button, and he noticed, and teased it out gently, so that it didn't pull. He dropped his arm, still smiling.

"I don't know," Severus said. "I don't think this is--" He was going to say "advisable," or "a good idea," but there was a car horn, and Potter was speaking at the same time, and it turned out there was a place in the basement of his hotel, which happened to be where Severus went all the time, so they decided to go.

"Do they really drink sake here?" Potter asked.

"Most Japanese drink a lot of beer," Severus said.

"Oh," Potter said. "Is Japanese beer good?"

"Ours is better, but they serve beers from all over the world in Tokyo."

"What do you drink?"

They walked into Severus' regular place, and the bartender set him up with a straight whiskey when he walked through the door. "Oh, you brought a friend," he said, in his Australian-accented English. "Do you want the rest of the bottle?"

"Yes," Severus said, and then remembering Potter, added, "Thank you." He was better at the curt, ultra-masculine type of Japanese manners, than he had a right to be. He was English, damnit, and he _should_ be polite.

He ordered half a dozen little dishes: skewers of grilled chicken and sugary beef, fried noodles, cold cooked spinach, raw tuna with avocado, little pieces of fried egg with some mysterious seaweed or sugar in it. At the last moment he ordered natto, just to see what Potter would make of it.

Potter sat down. He had such white, even teeth--no wonder he smiled so often. A waitress brought Severus' whiskey and two glasses, and plate after plate of food.

He poured a glass of whiskey for Harry Potter and gave a small, inward shudder.

"It's all right, I'm 25," Potter said. He clicked his glass against Severus' after it was filled. "Cheers," he said.

Skoal. Na zdrowie. L'Chayim. Chin-chin. To us. To the night and the music. To old friends. To new beginnings. To my sudden sexual attraction to young men. To my sanity, wherever it's got to.

"Cheers," Severus repeated, and sipped.

Potter had a surprisingly good head for drink, perhaps because he ate steadily. Severus found himself drinking too much, though he should have been accustomed to it. Harry kept eating the natto even though he clearly didn't enjoy it. Each time, he made a terrible face, and then swallowed more whiskey.

"So you can buy a bottle of whiskey for them to keep for you behind the bar?" Potter said. "You must have just started this one."

"I've had it for a few weeks. I don't usually drink with...um. I don't drink with people," Severus said. "Sometimes someone from work, though--I have the bottle and I can treat."

"I loved seeing you at work," Potter said suddenly. "You focus on people. They come up to the counter all upset about their broken whatsit..."

"Usually a laptop, but sometimes it's something stupid, like an iPad that won't get email," Severus said.

"Do you fix them with magic?"

"No, they trained me in how the things work." He took another drink. They were getting low, so he poured another round for both of them.

"You lean over the counter, and your hair is so long now, and," Potter took a drink, "You look into their eyes. I watched you in Australia," he said. "From across the room. This is really good."

"What is?"

"I'm so happy. I mean, all these people I loved died. Everything was cold and dark and everyone was just--dead. But now it turns out you're alive, and--it's really nice in here." He looked around the izakaya. "I like you alive. Have another drink."

"I like you alive, too." This time Potter poured for them both.

"Right, we were both supposed to die or something, and now we're here in this nice Japanese pub with the brilliant food--what's that?" The waitress came by with something in a basket.

"I ordered another plate."

"But what is it? It's not squid eyeballs or whatever that crazy rotten--what was that stuff?"

"Fermented soya beans."

"What made those horrid strings? Is this the same thing, only fried in batter?"

"I dare you to try it." Potter immediately grabbed a piece of tempura. "It's hot, though, Potter, take care." All you had to say was "I dare you," and he'd burn his tongue.

Potter chewed ecstatically. "It's--what is this?"

"Batter-fried avocado and camembert."

"Oh my God," Potter said. "Oh, this is nice. You have to have one of these! Is this meant to be a Muggle restaurant?" He grinned. "You sure they don't have elves back there?"

Severus took another drink and poured more for Potter. The waitress came with another dish. She said something in Japanese and then saw they didn't understand.

"On the house," she said. She stepped back so Severus could see the bartender from before. "He's happy you have friend today."

It was little cubes of fried tofu with some shaved green onion on it with slices of white sashimi on ice.

"Black cod," Severus explained to Potter. "It's my favourite." He poured them both more whiskey. Potter got a little pinker, even after he'd had more to eat. He was well in his cups, now. Severus could tell, though he also noted how blurred Potter appeared.

"You can fly," Potter said suddenly. "I saw you. You're the most magical person I ever met, you know. And brave. And really tricky."

"And drunk," Severus said. "Really drunk."

"Pretend I'm a computer customer."

"Why?"

"Because I want you do to it to me. Like this," Potter leaned forward and in apparent imitation, looked at him intently, and said in a deep voice, "What seems to be the trouble?"

"Is that how I really look?"

"No, because you're you. I can't really look like you."

Severus thought, "Because you're not ugly enough," but fortunately managed not to say it.

"It's--you have those eyes. You're powerful. You smoulder. You're like--oh, fine, you're like sex on a stick." Potter took another drink.

"I think people can understand you," Severus said. His face was hot.

"That's all right," Potter said. "Everyone else knows you're sexy, it's not like it's news."

"I'm not--I think you're misunderstanding something about Japanese culture."

Potter began to laugh drunkenly. "You're sexy everywhere, not only in Japan. Though I must say," he leaned forward, "You are really sexy right here." He put a hand on Severus' knee.

"Potter, this isn't," Severus said. "This isn't that kind of bar."

Potter looked at him. "Oh," he said. Severus could see that Potter was, as was typical for him, not really thinking. He hadn't thought, "I will tell my former professor he is sexy and put my hand on his knee in order to give him a stiffy." No. He'd blurted out what was on his mind and done what he felt like doing in the moment.

He surely hadn't thought his gesture through, hadn't planned to seduce Severus.

"You should seduce me," Potter said suddenly. "I would never expect it, you're probably brilliant in bed, and I could see myself totally falling in love with you. You're probably not even interested in men. Is there Veratiserum in this stuff?" He peered into his glass.

"I'm sorry, what? What?" Severus said. "What did you say?"

"Nothing, nothing, I think I'm drunk."

"Yes, it seems to be going around."

"I'm going to invite you up to my room."

"All right, you do that." He poured them each another glass. It seemed as though the bottle didn't have a bottom. "Did you cast a spell on my whiskey?"

"A little one."

Severus couldn't help it. He began to laugh. "You spelled my bottle not to empty, didn't you?"

"It's really good whiskey," Potter said earnestly, which Severus took to be confirmation. He drank a little more. "Would you like to come upstairs with me?"

"You can't hold your drink."

"Oh, you can hold it--" Potter tried to put the glass in his hand, and Severus laughed again. "I need to learn more jokes so you'll laugh more. Would you like to come upstairs with me?"

"You asked me that already."

"Did you already say yes?"

"Harry," Severus said.

"That ought to be illegal," Potter said, "Or at least require a license. That voice."

"You should go to bed," Severus said.

"Let me put the bill on my room tab," Potter said. "You bought all the whiskey." He snickered.

"Idiot," Severus said. They lurched to their feet. Potter wrote something on the bill that was meant to be his room number.

It was safe to go up with him, Severus thought, because the lift at the Excel was always so crowded and slow. They waited boozily in a mass of drinkers. No one ever took the stairs to the street, even though the place was called Izakaya 35 Steps. No--they dutifully waited to be shoved into a box like sardines.

They were pushed by the press of people to the back. Potter surreptitiously moved his hand until it was cupping Severus' arse. His palm was warm through the fabric, and his fingers pushed Severus' underwear into the crack. He squeezed lightly, as though Severus' arse cheek was some fruit he was testing for ripeness but didn't want to bruise.

Seven years of intimidation had gone out the window with a single evening's drinking. Severus' cock was absurdly, ludicrously hard, throbbing. He tried pulling his jumper down a bit, but it wasn't nearly loose enough.

Potter's room was on the 23rd floor, and he fondled Severus for nearly the entire ride. Severus looked straight ahead of him as each passenger got off. At floor 21, six people got out, leaving only two who could move away from them and so would have been able to see where Potter's hand was as he worked it further, stroking Severus' hole and perineum and scrotum through his clothing, if Severus hadn't been in the corner with Potter's body shielding him from view.

Severus could feel himself leaking into his underwear as the blunt fingers pushed at him.

Potter took his hand away when the doors opened, but there was no one there. "I'm in room 2304," he said, and got out of the lift.

"All right," Severus said, and went to push the button to go down to the lobby. Potter grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the lift.

It was a little difficult to walk when he was this hard, and he didn't seem to be going down at all.

"I don't do this," he said.

Potter opened the door with Alohomora. He couldn't find his key card anywhere in his windbreaker, so he slid out his wand. He pulled Severus over the threshold and into his arms. "Come here," he said, in a sweet, low growl. He pulled Severus on top of him, onto the bed, and unloosed his hair from its tie.

Severus had kissed women before, and touched breasts. He'd been in bed with women who were aggressive, who had been desperately aroused, or good at pretending to be. That had been the early 1980s--even an ugly bloke could get a leg over. Of course afterward it had been horrible. They had looked significantly less interested in him afterward, and had wanted to leave, or wanted him to leave, and once, one had expected money.

Twice he'd been jerked off in a loo by a man, which had been exciting, but the fellow hadn't even looked at his face.

And then he'd been a teacher, and then he'd been a spy, and then he'd had no one in the world, except this boy, this one boy, whom he had hated and who had meant everything, everything to him. He thought his heart would break all over again. He couldn't do this with Harry Potter.

"Harry," he said, "Harry, I can't," but then they were kissing, and their mouths were open, and it did feel like his soul was touching another person's soul. Potter held his hair and stroked it down his shoulder and then just touched him everywhere he could. It was so quick, Potter got his trousers down and had a wet finger in his arse and a hand around his cock, and he was so ready--he felt the finger going into him and he came into the tight grip, eyes clenched tight shut and light bursting against his eyelids, shuddering and _feeling_.

When he came back to himself and opened his eyes, Potter pulled his hands away and put them on his own prick. Severus had come all over him, and he was smearing the spunk on himself and moaning. "Kiss me," he said, and flung one hand up to pull Severus down. His mouth was loose and sloppy and he groaned into Severus' mouth, and trembled all over as his orgasm took him. He lay there, panting, for a moment, his shirt rucked up to show his hairy little belly, his pink nipples, his sweet, sweet mouth all slack, his hair messy as always.

Severus' heart hurt him. He started to get up, and Potter's eyes flew open. "Don't leave," he said. "Don't leave, alright?"

"I just need to use the loo," Severus said, and Potter let him up, and he did.

Merlin, he looked terrible in the mirror as he was washing his hands--the lines in his forehead, the scars on his neck, his sallow skin even yellower in the fluorescent light of the hotel bathroom. He dried his hands on a towel and tried to tuck in his clothing and straighten his hair.

Potter knocked on the door. "Sorry," he said. "I'm--" Severus opened the door. "Please don't leave. I know you--" He fell on Severus and hugged him _again_ , on the threshold of the bathroom. But it was fine. His heart pounded in his chest. Fine.

"I'm not leaving," Severus said into his sweaty neck.

"Good," Potter said.

**Author's Note:**

> In her first edition of _The Book of Middle Eastern Food_ , Claudia Roden spoke of one of her translators, a Lebanese student who read her recipes fainting with hunger and longing. My beta-reader, Caroline Lamb, described the snacks at her favorite Tokyo izakaya in precisely the same spirit. I wrote this story for 7types in the Snapely Holidays fest of 2011. Original Prompt: Snape tries to reinvent himself after the war and maybe even succeeds to a degree, but wherever he goes, there he is. Some humor would be nice. 7types also likes "IC, ugly, insecure Snape; first time; affection."


End file.
